A1: Undercity Makeover: Stairway to Heaven

I'm trying to slap A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity into shape for my local campaign consisting of the kid, the cat, and an online troll. When I tinkered with T1 my alterations were pretty limited on account of my well-documented nostalgia for the original. But because, as kids, we ran The A Series exclusively as side adventures on nights when no one had a dungeon ready, the Slaver saga doesn't pack the same nostalgic punch as T1 Hamlet of Villoge.

As a for instance, here's what I remember about our A1 excursion: It was Christmas vacation 1981/82, my neighbor Barry was at the helm--as the best dungeon-crafter in our gang, this was possibly the only time he ever ran a published module--and we spent an entire evening fighting a hoard of orcs and associated 'noids in front of a temple on top of a 60' wall. 

 What the heck are you talking about D-Chuckles? There ain't no temple on top of a 60' plinth in the dang Slave Pits!

 No? Well, tell that to Jeff Dee: 

Dice-Chucker challenge: Find this location in the A1 plans.

Right there on page 3 is an illustration by Jeff Dee of a temple-like structure at the top of a pretty grand stair, but there is nowhere on the map that could possibly suit the drawing. Which is too bad.

It's true that there is a temple in A1, though it's at ground level and accessible via a portcullis. And though there is a wall around the temple grounds--and even a Wall Encounter Table which includes several potential orc encounters--there is no stairs up to the wall, nor are there plans for the "Wall" level.  And despite my memory of the wall being 60' high--I remember mercilessly heaving an orc from the wall to see what 6d6 pts of damage would look like--nowhere is the height of the wall mentioned in the modge. 

Perhaps Barry, inspired by Jeff Dee's illustration from page 3 of the module, changed the plans; a common practice nowadays but unheard of when we were kids. Or perhaps I just don't remember it correctly; sadly, none of my gang--including Barry--has any recollection of what went down when we took on A1.

So Step 1 of Undercity Makeover will be to redraw the plans to include a massive stairway to the temple.

Beware! Lord Namalk VII is coming

 

Behold!

Every now  and then I get a bee in my bonnet about old timey fantasy/weird authors, particularly pre-Tolkeinian Brits from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So I was looking around for the works of Wiliam Hope Hodgson the other day, author of such works as the House on the Borderlands--no, it bears no resemblance to B2 whatsoever, though it's interpretation of "borderlands" might add some depth to that setting. 

"Blah blah blah, what's your point, O Great Chucker of Dice?" you ask? My point is this: check out that little pacman-shaped dude in the lower right corner of the cover of The Night Land by WH Hodgson and then tell me that that isn't the inspiration for the dude on the right.

 

Hobbitfest '14 Continues: Witcher style

While in Eastern Europe for a wetwork assignment some time ago I discovered a series of novels by an obscure Polish author named Adrzej Sapkowski. The series chronicles the adventures of a character called Geralt, who is a "Wiedzmin," which translates roughly as "Witcher." A silly name, to be sure; it is easy to understand why he's unknown in the English-speaking world.

I'm enjoying Mr. Sapkowski's output, despite the fact that I'm one of those obnoxious D&D nerds who professes to not care for fantasy literature all that much. I've enjoyed it so much that I've started translating The Wiedzmin series of books into English in hopes of finding a publisher here in the States. In the process I've come across a tidbit that hearkens back to late summer 2014 when, instead of pandemics and insurrection, hobbits were on everyone's mind.

Yes, it was Hobbitfest '14, a time when second breakfasts and foot-merkins were all the rage. At the time I posited that halflings in D&D needed to take some cues from other sources than the Shire and toughen up a bit if they wanted to survive in the modern gaming world. Sources such as Harvard Lampoon's Bored of the Rings, or the buff little dudes Jeff D. was rendering back in the day. 

 

R.I.P. Diego Maradona

So when I read this scene from Sapkowski's The Lady of the Lake--which I'm only now finding out was the last of the Witcher books--I decided I had to retroactively shoehorn it into Hobbitfest. 

In this scene, a family of halflings is tending their garden when they are approached by a band of mounted brigands lead by an exceptionally depraved character named Pike. The bandits demand that the halflings turn over all of their material wealth, food, and livestock, to which Rocco, the family patriarch, tells him where to shove it. The following ensues: 

Pike straightened up and reached for the shortsword hanging from his saddle.

"Have at them!" he yelled. "Kill them all!"

With a movement so fast it was almost imperceptible, Rocco Hildebrandt stooped down towards his barrow, took out a crossbow concealed under a rush mat, brought it to his cheek and sent a bolt into Pike's mouth, which was wide open in a yell. Incarvilia Hildebrandt, nee Biberveldt, swung her arm powerfully and a sickle spun through the air, slamming into Milton's throat... Ograbek, moaning, tumbled beneath the horse's hooves, with grandpa Holofernes' pruners buried in his belly up to the handles wooden facings... The entire incident took more or less the same time it would to utter the sentence 'Halflings are incredibly fast and can throw all sorts of missiles unerringly."

While this confirms the long held understanding that halflings are extra-ordinarily lethal with missile weapons (+3 to hit in good old fashioned AD&D), they also, based on their surnames, are of Dutch heritage. Ironically, the Dutch are currently the tallest people on this planet.